Florida police group: Use hotel tax to keep tourists safe

As local authorities investigate a string of hotel robberies in Central Florida's tourist areas, a statewide law-enforcement group is asking lawmakers for help.

The Fraternal Order of Police wants the Florida Legislature to let counties use a portion of the tax tourists pay on hotel rooms to fund public safety in tourist corridors such as Orlando's International Drive district.

Supporters say it would be a natural extension of the tax, which by law has to be spent on projects that promote and support tourism, such as advertising and sports and entertainment facilities. Nothing, they say, could threaten Florida's travel industry more than a reputation of being an unsafe place to visit.

And the threat is real: In recent weeks, armed bandits have struck about a dozen hotels and restaurants in tourist areas, including a Red Roof Inn on I-Drive and a Holiday Inn near Orlando International Airport, plus one Homewood Suites near the airport and another near Universal Orlando. Two armed men also robbed customers eating breakfast at a Denny's restaurant on I-Drive, taking purses, wallets, cell phones, cash and other items.

But the idea is almost certain to face opposition from the state's powerful tourism industry, which has fought most efforts to spend the tax on anything other than expenses that generate more business for hotels, theme parks and other tourism operators. And the police group has yet to find a lawmaker to take up its cause.

Jim Preston, president of the Florida State Fraternal Order of Police, said police, fire and ambulance agencies spend lots of money protecting tourist areas throughout Florida.

"I think it's reasonable that some of those tourist-tax dollars should be going to those agencies to help offset those costs," Preston said. "They have a large contingent of people that are dedicated to the tourist areas, and yet they get no funding from that tax."

Preston said the FOP's legislative committee voted last fall to make lobbying for the tourist tax one of the union's top priorities during the legislative session that begins next month. The union represents about 20,000 law enforcement officers across the state, including those in the Orange County Sheriff's Office, the Orlando Police Department and the Orange County Corrections Department.

Preston said his organization hasn't yet calculated how much agencies spend annually protecting tourist districts, but the sum is at least in the tens of millions of dollars. The Orange County Sheriff's Office alone spends more than $7 million in the I-Drive corridor, according to budget documents provided by the agency.

The hotel tax is a major revenue generator, particularly in tourist-rich Central Florida. Orange County raised nearly $190 million from the 6 percent levy during its last fiscal year. The vast majority of the proceeds is spent on the mammoth Orange County Convention Center — both to operate and pay off construction debt — and on tourism promotion through Visit Orlando.

Other law-enforcement groups say they, too, might get behind the effort to use some of that money on emergency services.

"It would certainly be something that we would entertain," said Matt Puckett, executive director of the Florida Police Benevolent Association, a competing police union that has about 24,000 members statewide. "You could make a pretty strong argument for that [the tourist tax] to be a revenue source to help fund public safety."

Boosters say the idea is appealing for a couple of reasons. It could allow some communities to invest more money into protecting their tourist areas, ensuring that travelers aren't scared away. Or they could use the tourist-tax proceeds to free up other money that can be spent on parks, sidewalks or other benefits for residents.

But any effort to expand the use of the tax will have to overcome opposition by the tourism industry, which has aggressively lobbied against similar ideas before.

During the past few years, for instance, industry lobbyists have quashed efforts to spend a fraction of the tax building affordable housing for low-wage service workers in the Florida Keys and on lifeguards and beach patrols in tiny Okaloosa County and other small coastal communities.

The only expenditure the industry has agreed to in recent years: allowing the tax to be spent on aquariums, an effort sparked by the Clearwater Marine Aquarium, which has become a significant tourist draw because of the popularity of "Winter," a dolphin with a prosthetic tail.

In a statement issued through a spokeswoman, the head of the Florida Restaurant and Lodging Association indicated the tourist-industry lobbying group intends to fight the police proposal, too.

"Florida hoteliers voluntarily supported a self-imposed local tourist development tax … on their industry with the understanding that these funds would be used to promote tourism to Florida's communities through marketing efforts," FRLA President and Chief Executive Officer Carol Dover said in the statement.

"We simply want to ensure these taxes are kept to their original intent — to draw tourists to our communities and to the hotels that generate these taxes."